According to The Verge that todayís a big day in the United Kingdom mobile market. The UK regulator of telecommunications, Ofcom, recently granted approval for carrier Everything Everywhere to roll out 4G LTE service in the UK on its 1800 MHz spectrum before the official 4G auction that is expected next year.

For those of you who donít know, Everything Everywhere is a joint venture of Orange and T-Mobile. The company will be free to offer LTE to UK customers beginning September 11. Competitors such as Vodafone, O2, and Three arenít very happy about this because the possible leaves the wireless carriers behind in the competition. Assuming Apple announces the next-generation iPhone on September 12 and it has 4G LTE capability, as rumored, Everything Everywhere will have an exclusive lock on the LTE iPhone service in the UK.

The rest of the carriers will all have to wait until early 2013 for the spectrum auction to happen, with actual implementation by the others expected no earlier than the third quarter of 2013. This seems to point towards Everything Everywhere having an unfair advantage. The advantage is so apparent that even Ofcom believes EE would have an advantage but they claim itís better to have some sort of 4G service in the UK as soon as possible rather than not have it at all for longer. An 1800 MHz LTE iPhone would easily point towards Everything Everywhere having a large advantage for at least a year. Both September 11 and September 12 should be marked as interesting dates in the UK for iPhone fans and 4G fans. Furthermore, if the new "iPad Mini" is announced and is offered with 4G LTE service as well, Everything Everywhere will have another advantage chalked up in their favor.

That is, of course, provided Apple support 1800 MHz
It will be interesting to see if they have different SKUs for different countries or if they can combine multiple bands in one device. Or if they just ignore LTE outside of the USA.
Either way, I am going on holiday on 10/9/12 so will miss the fun.

He who asks a question looks foolish for 5 minutes. He who doesn't ask a question remains foolish forever.